Latest News

  • What Plan?
    May 16, 2012 |
    Budget
    Today, the Senate will hold votes on 5 budgets that have two key features in common: they will not pass, and none have the support of Senate Democrats. It has now been over three years since the ruling party in Washington has passed a budget, so the commonalities shared by the budget measures to be voted on today should not surprise. Nor should the near-certain unanimous defeat of the president’s budget, as was the case in the House of Representatives earlier this spring. It didn’t pass last year. It won’t pass this year.
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  • Medicare Advantage Star Ratings: Detaching Pay from Performance
    May 15, 2012 |
    HealthCare
    Rewarding quality health plans is an admirable goal for the Medicare Advantage program. Unfortunately, the current system of linking star ratings to bonus payments and rebate adjustments instituted by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (and expanded by the CMS Quality Bonus Payment Demonstration) fails to achieve that goal, and depending on its specific implementation, may even be counterproductive.
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  • Containing the Costs of Higher Education
    May 14, 2012 |
    Education
    The president continues to demagogue the issue of interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans for no justifiable reason.
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  • Week in Regulation: May 7-11
    May 14, 2012 |
    Regulation
    President Obama signed yet another Executive Order directing agencies to review unnecessarily burdensome regulations. Nonetheless, a series of ObamaCare rulemakings and the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) proposed rule on fracking added more than $6 billion in regulatory costs and roughly 7 million more hours of paperwork.
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  • Graduating to What?
    May 10, 2012 |
    Education
    Over the next several weeks, thousands of students will graduate from college hopeful that their hard earned college degree will lead to a promising new job and the beginning of a long and prosperous career.  Unfortunately, reality will soon kick in once the graduation ceremonies and celebrations are over.  In fact, job prospects of recent college graduates are ominous due to the failed economic policies of this administration.  While President Obama has crisscrossed the country telling college students that our economy is improving and the job market is recovering, the facts
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